Well, it has been a couple fortnights since I last posted, but between getting College graduation under wraps and transferring back home, I honestly haven't had the time to just sit down and enjoy a nice blog sesh. But enough about me.

As I mentioned, I'm fresh out of college and have an abundance of time on my hands now that I'm stuck searching the rather stagnant job market. What better way to invest this time than into a strategy RPG?

Having played only a few acts out of Disgaea, I came to appreciate how fricken complicated that game was. I think I may have found one that tops it. Knights in the Nightmare is a relatively new sRPG produced by none other than niche publisher Atlus, whom I've had a love hate relationship since, well, ever. Each game they produce usually follows a pretty standard formula, but the Sting Entertainment group who put it together seemed to say 'fuck that' and did their own thing.

The most apt way I can categorize the game is as a tactical-shmup-RPG. As confusing as that sounds, that's probably --in all modesty-- the best way to describe the game play. I'll try to describe it as concisely as possible.

SO, basically (I say that with extreme caution), you control a wandering soul termed the Wisp, which is capable of inhabiting bodies of deceased Knights to fight for you. With each action a portion of your time (usually 60 seconds) is taken away. The catch is that the warriors that fight for you can take no damage. Instead, as you float the wisp around the battle-field, enemies shoot 'bullets' at your Wisp in pure old-school shmup fashion. If the wisp is hit by one of these bullets, a portion of alotted time is detracted from your timer. Once the timer hits zero, the round ends, and you must start anew in the next round. All in all it's a race against the clock to clear the board of enemies.

I apologize if that sounds confusing (re-reading it, it is a pretty poor summary). It would probably be a wiser route to watch the tutorial video produced by IGN. It imparts a pretty decent understanding of the game mechanics, and shows off some of the great hand drawn art that is present throughout the game.

In addition to the complex battle system is the endless amounts of micromanaging you'll be doing in between battles via leveling your troops and upgrading and combining weapons. OCD and number hungry strategists will be in heaven. I've gotten through about a dozen battles now and I'm still not any where near having a full understanding of the number crunching going on.

Actually, some of the features talked about in the in-game tutorial I haven't even begun to approach yet. Honestly, I'm not sure I ever will. Regardless, I am still happy with my purchase. The near infinite amounts of customization and synthesis possibilities will keep me more than happy for quite some time, and if I ever do get around to educating myself more fully, then there'll likely be a hell of a lot more for me to do. The mechanics of this game are a welcome departure from those of traditional sRPG's, and hopefully games in the same genre will start to experiment with new ideas as well.

If you're willing to put in some time and effort to get down the basics, you'll find that you'll enjoy this game as much as I am.

-Alocide

So over Thanksgiving break I took the mandatory trip through my gaming library to play through some of my favorites while awaiting the grand feast that was being prepared. I played some tidbits of my all time faves including Star Ocean 2, some Guitar Hero with my brother, and a dash of Fable 2. All fine and dandy, a great holiday really.

Later that weekend, my brother revealed to me that he had re-upped our World of Warcraft subscription because he had installed the new expansion (we share an account and trade off who's playing when).

Lo and behold...I think I'm hooked again. He showed me around some of the new content, including the new Death Knight class, and my goodness I don't think I've ever been more enthralled with the game. In fact after watching him play for about an hour as his Death Knight, I decided that I absolutely had to have one and sat down for a few hours with the game again to start up my freshly created blood-spec knight of deadly awesome.

Unfortunately I left home having only invested about 3 hours into the new character to return to school. I made the conscious decision to not upload the expansion to my computer so I wouldn't be tempted to play (and in one cataclysmic swoop watch as all my hard work invested in this semester came crashing down). Funny enough, I've been craving the game. Literally craving. I can't stop thinking about how I should properly a lot the remainder of my talent points, or how I should go about re-speccing my hunter now that there are new talents in his trees. Not to mention it looks absolutely gorgeous on my Dad's 24 inch mactop.

I'm not sure why at this juncture I need to play again. I out and out quit when I came to school, relinquishing my (at the time) 60 hunt master to my bro so that I could focus on my studies and not become another WoW-fail statistic. I honestly haven't missed it. Sure I joke about it with my buddies at school from time to time, throwing in an occasional reference over some drinks for some lulz, but never enough to make me miss the game.

However, it seems that I have some unfinished business to take care of in Azeroth/Outlands/Northrend now. I play on Dragonblight, my hunter goes by Alocide, and my newly made DK is Toxico [creative, I know]. Hit me up and indulge in addiction with me...

-Alocide

All right, so I recently invested in Fable 2, and so far I am extremely pleased with my purchase; however, being easily swayed and always up for conversation I came across this little gem of a question:

Why is this game so fun/addicting?

Of course the captain obvious answer leaps out at first, "because it effing is Alo," but when I thought a little harder about it I started to double back on my initial reaction and have since revised it a little bit.

All right, so I get to play my character however I want, I get to go GTA on just about anybody's ass in the game while still sticking to the fairly linear plot. The scope of the world is awesome, the doggy pal that you get is quite a help, and being able to own property is quite enjoyable

And still II can't help but wonder why this hack and slash is so fricken appealing. Which is exactly what this is at its core: a hack and slash. I'll admit, I've played every Dynasty Warriors game Koei has popped out of its womb and loved every minute of it, but I am just now realizing that H&S games are rather...well to be blunt, shallow (I know, I'm a bit slow, but bear with me here). Maybe this is why I like the game so much though. Its a DW game with structure and oodles of little extra bits.

Perhaps it's these little bits that make the game. One of those " the sum of its parts is greater than the whole" deals (science, it's everywhere). While there's a limited palate of options for weapons and 'armor,' and even the slightest action such as eating can undo my hard earned bad-assery, there still exists little distractions from these shortcomings. You mean I can be an assasin and a pirate?!?? At the SAME TIME?!? Well maybe not simultaneously, but dammit I can jump between jobs faster than a crack addict looking for a way to get his next fix. And wait, I can have a wife? SIX wives??! What? .....oh yea sure I'll find that guy to advance the plo.....I can be a bartender now?!? AWESOME

I really have no serious problems with the game. I'm hooked. I'm just confused as to what exactly it is I'm hooked to. Is it the little nuances that allow me to do or be what I want (aka minigames and side quests), or is the plot and core gameplay just so engaging that I am unwares?

Hmph, whatever I'm gonna go pillage a village and immediately build it back up so I can do it again.

-Alocide

Left 4 Dead's recent release has stirred some memories in my head regarding an absolute fate that I am nearly positive will be occurring relatively soon: the Zombie Apocalypse.

Oh yes, it is coming, and when the unfortunate event does come about I plan on being prepared. In one of my less well thought out purchases, I picked up this alluring book-- arguably the most flippant 11 dollars I've ever spent, but an interesting read none-the-less.

Perhaps it is my childhood memories of creating a fort and fending off intruders that causes me such a readiness to run for the hills and construct an impenetrable castle armed to the teeth with bullets and obscenely massive firearms.

In case you were wondering, here is what my chateau(s) du cataclysm will be like. (All of this assumes that I someday make it big with my rotating-barka-dog-lounge chair and become grotesquely rich).

1: Orient primary location of residence along the shore with a high cliff at its back, and at least 10 ft. high walls surrounding the premises.

2: Have a secret underground passageway leading below the manor, to an outdoor dock accessible only from the passage. Allow no one to ever enter from this entrance other than the two compatriots whom I have

3: Hired to watch my back and pilot my sea-borne vessel. This vessel will have the capability of running on sun energy as well as wind. One of my hired hands will be trained in all methods of seaward navigation. The other, trained in medicine and alternative survival techniques. Favorably, both will have been spec ops, and each of their names contain either "Bear," "Les," "Rasputin," or any combination of the 3.

4: Once aboard this vessel, enjoy a leisurely cruise to the farthest northern reaches of the planet where I have also

5: Built a castle, with equally high walls as the first house, and enough provisions to last 6 months for 40 people. The construct will contain a greenhouse and run off of green technology in case the stay becomes longer than anticipated (oh, and there are weapons beyond anything I can imagine contained within the complex). Hopefully, the naturally harsh conditions will deter any of the walking dead from ever finding us, and if they do, they will be significantly slowed by the booby trapping precautions I have taken years in advance.

So there.

I currently have 5 dollars stashed away in my ZA fund (the bank didn't find Zombie Apocalypse too entertaining). Any significant contributions to the fund will ensure you a spot on the ship for a complimentary cruise to safety. If you fell that I am missing anything, throw me a comment. You can never be too prepared.

Checks made payable to
-Alocide

I have a dilemma, and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. In the interest of this article let us say that I have a "friend" who, for some obscure reason, has just crawled out from whatever crevasse he's been sleeping in and discovered the vast world of internet piracy via torrents. I had a discussion with said friend, and it seems that he is emphatic with his new portal to the internets. Since then he claims to have doubled his music library and explored some video games which he never nutted up and bought with his hardly earned cash.

What games you ask? Well much to my surprise my friend actually can read and has actually loaded up some pretty recent independently developed stuff such as World of Goo and Crayon Physics.

Don't worry I'm getting to my point. Just a smidge more background/

With large conglomerates such as EA and Blizz-Acti-F*ck (or whatever their name is now) more or less running the show with their billion dollar budgeted games, there leaves very little room for what I call the 'garage band' style developers. Producing independently developed games these days seems nearly impossible now. With very limited budgets these garage coders are basically limited to spreading their product via word of mouth (or a free distribution method, but humor me), or pray that some megalo-corp. happens across their site and picks up their IP.

That is of course unless their game is somehow incorporated into the culture known as the internet and becomes available across torrents and all that fancy stuff. Now, in this way their IP is successfully spread and it gets their name out there. This in turn would make the publisher more likely to be picked up by one of the major distribution joints; however, this leaves an open wound in the side of the little guy. If they were picked up by the big guys and prospectively supposed to make at least some sort of profit off of their product it is still floating around on the internet waiting to be pillaged and pirated.

So I suppose my question is whether piracy actually helps these tiny independent guys, or if in the long run it hurts them.

-Alocide

(This thought occurred to me while coasting through some of 1up's forums and http://boards.1up.com/zd/board/message?board.id=games&thread.id=929039 that jumped out at me)